Picard is a frozen food shop which I drive past almost every day. I assumed it was a bit like Iceland (not that there is anything wrong with Iceland of course) and so had never been in. Until someone told me yesterday it has M&S style ready-meals, and it does!!!!! I am ridiculously excited about this. I spent over 100 euros in there this morning filling a little trolley with frozen snails with garlic butter. ready-to-eat Chinese and curry, chocolate puddings and creme brulee, fab vegetables and all manner of other exciting stuff.
AND - I have succesfully navigated another piece of French admin and am now in the child benefit system, and am owed lots of euros, the kids are off enjoying centre de loisirs so I have lots of time to get things done and I'm really starting to feel more at home here (probably won't last, but still....) and am even joining a book club. And the weather is now (generally) better it's the holidays for another month and a half. Hooray!!!!!!
I haven't posted for a while as the modem has been taken out by a storm and there is only so much time one wants to spend in McDonalds.
A few days ago Toby was seven. Seven!!!!! Where does time go? How did he get so big? etc etc so of course we had a birthday party for him.
Parties here in France are very different and a lot less effort than the English version. You don't have to hire a venue, you don't do a party tea, you don't need an entertainer or a bouncy castle as we always used to have in London and you don't have to invite 30 kids. You don't have to do party bags. You don't even have to organise games. You just invite some kids over, buy loads of Haribo, make a cake and leave them to get on with it.
The kids seemed to enjoy it (it was a joint party for Toby and Livi as Livi's birthday is in the middle of the holidays) but somehow for me it felt like less of an event than the usual parties we used to have. Plus I spent a lot of time fretting about keeping the kids safe in the pool.
Anyway. Toby is delighted with his new bike WITH GEARS and it means we can now go for little bike rides without having to stop every few metres as you can't go very far from the house without encountering a big hill. Really sweet.
Yesterday I went to Paris to learn about casinos for an article which was brilliant. Absolutely fascinating. Plus the fact that I can go to Paris and back in time for dinner makes me feel like I am not really living in the sticks after all. As I wasn't paying I travelled Air France which was very civilised - I still don't understand why the low budget airlines don't allocate seats. Part of being on a proper airline meant I got newspapers, and I know this is terrible but that was the first time I had properly read a French paper since I have got here.
There was a huge story about whether Sunday opening should be allowed in France (they are now considering it for tourist areas and large towns, but it seems like this is a very big deal) but the best thing about them was the horoscopes, which as well as the usual sections have a section for health which say things like "headaches" or "possible lumbar pain." Ha ha!!!! So French!!!!
